CHAPTER XXV.
“BEHOLD A MAN FULL OF LEPROSY!”
Our merchant in Havana was a leper. Poor Don Anastasio had had the disease in increasing loathsomeness for fifteen years before we knew him—a native, I believe, of Central America, a man of wealth, cultivation, and refinement, and one of the clearest-headed, best business men in Havana—best in every sense; for, with great tact and shrewdness, he combined perfect honesty and integrity, rare virtues in those business circles. Leprosy was the inheritance of Don Anastasio; until he was thirty years of age no symptoms of the poison had manifested themselves. And his portrait, taken in early life, that hung in his office, represented a very handsome man. Our dear friend was confident that the disease was stimulated into activity from large doses of quinine prescribed to save his life while suffering from a congestive chill, and he often regretted that he had not risked the consequences of refusing the medicine.
In the incipiency of the disease he placed himself in a hospital in France, in the hands of specialists. From there he visited noted springs in the Pyrenees, bending his whole energies and invoking the best medical skill to eradicate, if possible, the fearful malady that was beginning to consume his body. The disease steadily pursued its course, its steps were never arrested. The patient’s condition was never alleviated; there were no days when he felt that he was better, no hours when he had even a flickering hope that he might remain as he was, much less recover. No solace came to him that he looked better to-day, even if it was to look worse to-morrow. He never looked better. Neither medicine, springs, nor treatment ever brought relief. When we first saw him the poison had been creeping through his frame so long that he was a pitiful sight to look upon. How much more pitiable he became no tongue can tell. In his office, which opened into a small parlor on one side, and into a couple of bedrooms on the other, Don Anastasio lived day in and day out, season after season, year after year, with his faithful friend and partner, who attended to all the out-door business of the firm. Don Anastasio very rarely ventured outside the walls of his abode. He could only walk a few steps, and every movement was painful. It followed, therefore, that all our business transactions with him were conducted in his office. There the poor sufferer, in loose clothing and thickly wadded dressing-gown, confined to his chair, was always to be found, with a clear brain and an honest heart, ready with keenness and intelligence, counsel and advice, to help us in our perplexities, and show us the way.
His hands in mittens, his head covered with a thick cap, his feet muffled in loose slippers, not a hair on his head, eyelashes, eyebrows, and beard all gone; tips of his fingers gone, so that, even with a three-sided pen-staff strapped to his hand, it was with the utmost difficulty that he could sign his name.
The kindly old man gradually crumbled away. His face became swollen, livid, and mottled by turns. The cartilage of his nose vanished by slow degrees, till that feature, with seams and scars, and vivid blotches, sunk to a level with the cheeks. His ears dropped away little by little, as though pieces had been snipped out of their ragged edges; his fingers perished, joint by joint, until he could no longer turn the leaf of a book. By and by his senses began to decay, his sight became dim, hearing dull; and when, after a twelve months’ absence from Havana, I saw Don Anastasio for the last time, he had already become so blind that he could only distinguish light from darkness, and so deaf that the familiar voice of his partner and life-long friend was the only one that reached him; his voice was so low and grating, so hollow and unlike anything human, that no one but the same devoted companion could catch and interpret its meaning.
Touch went with the earliest ravages, for leprosy is a skin-disease. Even when Don Anastasio had fingers to hold a cigar, the odor of burning flesh was the first indication that its lighted end had touched his hand.
I frequently cast inquiring eyes upon the portrait of the vigorous, dark-eyed young fellow with bright smile, ruddy glow, and clustering curls, that hung upon the wall before me, with a painful effort to trace any resemblance in it to the pinched and shriveled wreck of humanity that sat muffled in quilted garments at my side. The little, flickering spark of life remaining, while still illuminating his grand intellect and imperishable soul, had not sufficient power to impart warmth to his decaying body. While others were all aglow with the heat and moisture of a tropical day, he sat shivering in his cushioned chair, with skin dry and unresponsive as parchment.
Don Anastasio had been more than business agent to us; more than buyer and seller for the plantation. He had been our unwavering, steadfast friend, an adviser whose advice was always the best, a counselor whose counsels were always the wisest. Through more than twenty years of living death Don Anastasio maintained his position among the prominent merchants of Cuba, daily transacted business that required the utmost foresight and caution, and was intrusted with negotiations of the most delicate and confidential nature. When scarcely enough of his body remained to serve as a casket for his generous soul, he retained his mental faculties unimpaired, was as kind in his thoughts and sound in his judgment as ever, and to the end “nobly bore the grand old name of gentleman.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
SUGAR-MAKING—DINNER AT “JOSEFITA’S”—DOMESTIC SERVICE—POOR DON PEDRO.
During the sugar-making time in winter all was excitement and confusion on the plantations, suddenly, as if by magic, awakened from the summer’s sleepy quiet. Owners, who had city homes, came from Havana, Matanzas, Guïnes, and Guanabacoa, to el campo; and then we, who had no city home, and had long vegetated in seclusion, enjoyed a little society.